In creating high vacuum environments for a variety of production and experimentational purposes, mechanical vacuum pumps are used to reduce the vacuum in an enclosed vacuum chamber down to a certain level. Beyond that level, beginning at a range of perhaps 1.times.10.sup.-3 torr, it is common practice in the technology today to use a cryopump to further reduce the vacuum inside of a chamber. A cryopump is, in essence, a cryogenic freezer which causes free gases inside of a vacuum chamber to solidify, because of the extremely cold surface temperature of the panels chilled by the cryopump, typically to a temperature of less than 10 degrees Kelvin. Thus the cryopump lowers the gas pressure inside of a chamber by freezing the gases out of the chamber. Cryopumps are typically operated in a vacuum range of 1.times.10.sup.-3 to 1.sup.-12 torr. While cryopumps have no moving parts inside of the vacuum chamber, they do include a closed-loop refrigeration system for creating the cryogenic cold conditions, and, although the compressors are commonly remotely located from the vacuum equipment, the expander module containing the cooled plates which must be exposed inside of the vacuum chamber must be located on the chamber. This expansion module is vibrated by the force of the gases compressed by the compressor and pumped to the expander module. This vibration can be detrimental to the maintenance of a high vacuum within the equipment since the vibration can induce vacuum leakage in couplings which are insufficiently tightly sealed throughout the rest of the equipment and can also cause oscillation or movement in the target or beams being utilized inside of the vacuum.
One example is known in the prior art of a device specifically intended to isolate and damp vibration from a cryopump while connecting the cryopump to suitable vacuum equipment. That example is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,217. In the device disclosed in that patent, the cryopump expander module must hang beneath the vacuum equipment to be pumped, as for example an electron microscope, by a metal bellows which is specifically adapted to isolate the vibrations from the expander module of the cryopump. Vibration damping isolators in the form of resilient lateral motion restraining devices surround the module to keep the expansion module in a linear orientation to confine the movement of the module. This system suffers from the inherent disadvantage in that to utilize it the expander module must be hung underneath the vacuum chamber. Since this physical arrangement is not always necessary or convenient, this system is not desirable for some environments.
Other examples of systems designed to isolate vibration in temperature sensitive equipment are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,394,819, which discloses a horizontal coupling arrangement for a mechanical vacuum unit used to cryogenetically cool sensitive equipment, and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,403, which discloses a refrigeration transfer mechanism designed to reduce vibration transfer while allowing thermal coupling. Another vibration dampening mechanism for a heat coupling system is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,742,729. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,609,992 and 3,721,101 disclose methods for isolating equipment at extremely low cryogenetic temperatures. The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 4,216,505 illustrates a transducer head vibration dampening apparatus which includes a metallic mass and a frictionally engaged transducer head structure.